As Bruce Forsyth, CBE, said on The Price is Right, Points Make Prizes. The same rationale applies to the many supermarket-branded credit cards now available to the cash-savvy shoppers. Not only do these cards come with some pretty neat features, such as 0% on transfers and purchases, they also can help you rack up a fair few Brucie Bonuses as part of your weekly shop on the essentials (that’s two ITV gameshows invoked within the space of 96 words including the title of this blog and the opening paragraph – result!).

First up amount the supermarket cards we’re looking at today is the Tesco Bonus Credit Card, which, in our opinion, is the best of the three mainstream credit cards available from Tesco. Boasting a typical 15.9% APR variable (actually a lower rate than their flagship credit card) and 0% on all purchases for the first three months, the Bonus Credit Card would be pretty good if it just boasted these two features alone, but it also comes with whats called a ‘bonus interest payment back every 12 months’.

What this means in plain English is that every year you receive back 1/12th of the total amount of interest (if any) you have paid by using the card. As well as this, the card offers a 0% on balance transfers for 13 months – much more generous than some. This however, comes with a handling charge of 2.9% per transfer.

Sainsbury’s Credit Card is the imaginatively titled credit card from Sainsbury’s, and comes with the same typical 15.9% APR variable rate as the Tesco card, but comes with 0% on balance transfers for 12 months instead of 13, and there is also the slightly higher handling fee rate of 3.0%

On the plus side, Sainsbury’s give you the option to rack up some serious pointage – you currently get 2 points for every pound you spend on Sainsbury’s shopping, which you can double up to 4 points per pound if you hand over your Nectar card at the same time; meaning that the card basically gives you 4 per cent back on all your Sainsbury’s food shopping. Additionally, you also get 0% on all purchases made at Sainsbury’s stores for the first 12 months of the card, and 0% for 3 months on any purchases made elsewhere. Don’t forget you can use the Nectar card to cash in at places including BP stations and Magnet stores.

With the costs of fuel and food creeping up all the time, its worth knowing that as prices rises, potential savings rise as well – see our previous post on points saving schemes for more info.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Credit Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.